The Nature of Love
by H. S. Hines
Summary: Sequel to The Nature Of Betrayal. Complete, oneshot, drama. Kagome has been poisoned by a youkai and Tenseiga may be needed. Will Sesshomaru help?


_Disclaimer: The only character I own is Kane (well, and his friends). Everyone else belongs to Takahashi._

Rating: T  
Genre: Drama  
Codes: OC/OC, Inu/Kag, Rin/Sess  
Feedback: Reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome. However, my muse has been so burned by flames I'm shocked this was written, so keep those to yourself. They will only serve to inspire more hate fics in the future.

_Special Note: This story is credited to LadyRinRemix. Thanks, dear! She wrote the plot outline for this fic as a request for a sequel and her idea was so well thought out that after I nitpicked it to death, I ran with it, as she requested. A bit different from what she was expecting, I'm sure, but… she can blame my muse, I suppose. Things never come out quite as I mean, although I'm actually pretty happy with how this came out. I managed to incorporate pretty much everything she asked, I hope!_

_Note: This is the sequel to "The Nature of Betrayal" and can be read as a standalone, but you'll be very confused. **Kane in this story is pronounced Kah-nay **and is not to be confused with Cain, from the bible. Kane means "tribute, warrior; the doubly-accomplished, golden; man, the eastern sky; beautiful" and took me way too long to come up with for just a simple character name! For simplicity's sake, I have had InuYasha take Kagome's name, since he was born pre-Meiji and had no last name of his own. I tossed around Taji (silver and gold) and then tossed it out because it would be much simpler just to use Kagome's family name and would likely be what InuYasha would do anyway._

**The Nature of Love**

"Higurashi-san!" a voice called. "Higurashi-san! Higurashi! Oi! Kane!" Kane turned around, pulled out of his daydream by the sound of his name. "You forgot your portfolio," Shiro called to him. "Again," he added as he caught up to the boy and handed him his leather portfolio.

"Thank you," Kane said, taking it from his classmate. "I'm sorry, Shiro, you know how I can be." Kane opened the carrier, making sure he had put his most recent project inside. It wouldn't do to get the entire thing organized and forget the piece that had one him first prize in Tokyo University's spring art competition. It was one of his few battle scenes, which he seldom drew since battles tended to begin and end almost before he could draw them out. He was well known for his drawings of daily life in the sengoku jidai. Almost no one knew that they were drawn from life.

Kane hurried to the bus stop, knowing that he was going to miss it if he didn't run. He had spaced off again and completely lost track of time. The bus was just pulling up as he barely avoided crashing into a junior high school girl waiting for it. He ended up tripping and falling on his butt to avoid the collision and his face went red when her friends started laughing at him.

"Hey, kid, watch it," she said, offering him a hand up. He glared at her, but took the hand, snatching his portfolio away from a puddle that was dangerously close to it. He muttered under his breath, annoyed by the giggling girls now surrounding him. "What did you say?" the girl asked. He released her hand and looked away.

"I'm not a kid, but thank you for helping me and I'm sorry for nearly running into you," he said, which was much nicer than what he had actually grumbled. His father had been a bad influence on his vocabulary growing up and when he was irritated, it had a tendency to show.

"Not a kid, huh? Funny, from here, you don't look any older than my little brother and he's eleven."

"I'm twenty years old," Kane said quietly. "And a student at the University of Tokyo." Her eyebrow raised and one side of her mouth went with it. He ignored the look of disbelief and stepped onto the bus before her. He ran his pass and found a seat quickly. He hated standing on the bus and there were few places to sit down left. His age was a constant source of irritation for him. "I stopped aging at thirteen, not eleven," he mumbled under his breath. He was five feet, two inches high, but despite being the same height as many adults, his face betrayed him.

Once again, he lamented that being only a quarter youkai hadn't increased his aging any. Sure, it meant he'd live a long, long life, but that didn't even seem that appealing to him. Having been raised with the rare ability to travel through the Bone Eater's well with his parents, Kane had become acquainted with death at an early age. He easily remembered asking his parents why Miroku-san and Sango-san weren't in the present time with them and how he had cried when he finally understood their answer.

Everyone he loved in the sengoku jidai had been dead for over four hundred years, except Kirara, Shippo-san and his uncle, Sesshomaru. They were youkai and had survived time and war through the centuries to live now, in modern times. Kirara wasn't noticed since she had learned to hide her second and third tails and appear as nothing more than a common cat. Shippo-san had adjusted easily to the change in eras due to Kagome's tales of a time without war, where he could live in peace (if he could just learn to hide his tail better!). Shippo-san had told her that her stories to him as a child had been what helped him survive, especially when the sengoku jidai ended in favor of the Azuchimomoya ma, when the worst of the wars against youkai began. He knew he could go into hiding until the Tokugawa, when the Christians would be forced to stop their crusade as their religion was suppressed.

Kane's history grades were always above and beyond, due to his personal interest and Shippo-san's willingness to give him a first-person accounting from the times. Of course, things like the youkai taiji campaign of 1578-1636 were erased from history with the existence of youkai and kami as fact. This meant that he encountered no more than racist discrimination from people assuming he was biracial rather than hanyo and his father didn't need to tell him what a blessing that was. He had seen how travelers through Kaede's village had treated InuYasha, had heard the comments they whispered and dodged a few stones himself from other children when he went out of the village. After encountering his father and the villagers' reactions to anyone negatively commenting against their protector, travelers never made the mistake of being rude with him.

In the village through the well, before Tokyo was even Edo, InuYasha was treated as a hero—a savior. Long before Kane was even born, his parents, along with Miroku-san, Sango-san, Shippo-san, Kirara, their friend Koga, the dead priestess Kikyo and his uncle Sesshomaru, defeated Naraku and brought about the end of his reign of terror that had lasted fifty years and nearly destroyed Feudal Japan. Another history book omission…

"Kane-kun!" a voice shrieked in his ear, which twitched back sensitively, hidden by his long hair. A moment later, he was—not unhappily—being suffocated by the bosom of his best friend, Ai. She plopped down into the seat next to him and grabbed his art case and began rifling through it. She sighed when she discovered nothing new inside and poked him in the side. "Where is it? C'mon, you can show Ai!"

"I left it at home," Kane said. "And good afternoon, Ai-chan."

"You did not, you never go anywhere without that thing," Ai protested. Kane shrugged.

"I've had a lot on my mind lately," he answered. Ai immediately sobered and stared at the seat in front of them.

"They still haven't found a way to save her?" Ai asked. Kane flinched.

"No." He bit his lip and stared out the window, willing the tears to stop before they started. A bump in the road jostled him and knocked the portfolio out of Ai's hand, but he caught it before it hit the floor and pulled it back into his lap. She was staring at the place it had been a moment before, then slowly, her eyes tracked his hand. He cursed inwardly at his clumsiness and thanked everything holy that it was Ai who saw the movement and not someone else. Ai was one of the few people who knew he was hanyo.

They had met in fifth grade, when some Ai was being bullied severely by other kids and Kane stepped in to stop it. The other students had immediately turned on him, but he didn't care. He and Ai had each other for the next year and a half and when they started junior high, they never saw those other kids again. There had been some strangeness in their friendship in eleventh grade and they had even stopped speaking to each other after they lost their virginity to one another. They had dated for a month after and while they enjoyed the sex, it alienated them from one another when they suddenly didn't know how to behave in social situations where they were supposed to be just friends.

He supposed it was the secret nature of that relationship that had killed it. Thankfully, Ai had decided that their friendship was worth more than one failed love affair and harassed him into nearly forgetting the thing ever happened. Forgetting became impossible when they started sleeping together again in college. He wasn't really sure what their relationship was, since she still dated other boys off and on, but ended up in his bed every night. Sometimes he wondered why she even bother with having her own apartment—she didn't set foot inside it unless she was mad at him, which had happened all of twice in the two years they had been practically living together.

"I'm so sorry, Kane. I love your mother," Ai said, leaning into him.

"She loves you, too, Ai," Kane answered. "She keeps teasing me that we're being stupid and should just get married."

"What do you tell her when she says that?" Ai asked.

"I change the subject. Honestly, Mom thinks that just because she and dad met when she was fifteen that every young relationship can be like theirs."

"They've got that whole soul-connection thing going on, though."

"I think she spends too much time in the sengoku jidai," he added.

"I think there's too much dog in you to settle down," Ai said.

"I'm not the one with a different boy every month," Kane pointed out.

"You never ask me to stop," Ai countered.

"Do you want to marry me, Ai?" Kane asked, confused.

"Maybe," she answered. "But that didn't sound much like a proposal to me."

"But… you know what I am," he said. Kane was wary of even making friends with most humans, marrying one seemed out of the question to him. He had pretty much accepted that he would spend his life alone.

"When has that ever mattered?" Ai asked. Kane turned to look in her eyes, but she stood up, grabbed her bag and camera case and walked away. He barely realized that this was his stop and he tripped over his own feet trying to follow. This time, he wasn't as lucky and landed on his face, in front of that same group of girls. They erupted into laughter and he suppressed the growl that rose in his chest until it died when Ai yanked him up off the ground.

"Hey, lady, is he really twenty?" one of the junior high school girls asked. Ai grinned at her and leaned in to kiss Kane, who closed his eyes and kissed her back reflexively.

"No, I just like 'em _really _young," Ai replied in a hostile tone as she dragged the now blushing Kane off the bus. "Why do you bother caring about what strangers say?" Ai asked him as she dragged him through the rain, which had started without his notice, to the hospital doors.

"It just pisses me off," Kane answered, for probably the hundredth time.

"You're just like your father," she teased, letting go of his hand. They knew the way to his mother's room by heart and he was torn between dragging his feet because he hated seeing her laid low like this and hurrying because he didn't know when she would pass away. He stopped in the doorway and grabbed Ai's hand, clutching it like a child. She squeezed it back and pulled him in the room, like every other day this past week.

Higurashi Kagome was lying in the bed before him, tubes and wires connecting to monitors and plastic bags that beeped and dripped respectively, keeping her alive. No one knew an antidote to the poison in her blood, left there by the fangs of a youkai five-centuries dead. It had been during an attack on a neighboring village while they were visiting Sango-san and Miroku-san's family. One of their grandchildren came running in with an old man from the village under attack and everyone had grabbed their weapons, even his mother and Sango-san—whose hair was all grey compared to the white streaks in his mother's—who should have ceased battling years earlier.

InuYasha was sitting at the window, looking out at the city below him, and looking more like a guard than a husband in that moment. Kane knew he blamed himself for her injuries. They both knew she should stop fighting, but neither had the balls to tell her. His father had suggested it only once and kissed floor. Kane didn't understand the point of the kotodama rosary around his father's neck until that day. He had never seen it used and thought it was just an heirloom or something. Certainly, his own sealing beads matched, though he wore them on his ankle.

He knew the sword ever-present at his father's hip, despite the modern era, was what sealed InuYasha's youkai blood within. The difference between them had been that Kane had always known what his anklet was for. He didn't remember his first transformation, since he was only a toddler, but that had been the reason the beads had been placed on his tiny body. Their design allowed them to be loosened each time he started to outgrow them, but never allowed it to be removed. His father had explained them one day when he was six and tried to remove them because one of his friends had teased him about wearing them.

His father had explained that he still wore his necklace because of the training he gave Kane with the Tetsusaiga. While the boy was using it, InuYasha was separated from it and if he were to transform, he would be controllable. That was why his mother was always present during those training sessions as well. Kane wasn't great with the Tetsusaiga, but he picked up on kaze no kizu much faster than his father had.

His mind had wandered again and as a result, he had missed the first words his mother spoke to him. He listened to the rest of what she said, which was the same as the day before. She told him not to worry about her and how proud she was of him. Then she asked to see anything new he had drawn and he had to admit he forgot his sketchbook this day. She smiled and told him it was okay, he could bring it tomorrow.

Then she closed her eyes. One of the monitors started to scream. Kane and InuYasha each grabbed a hand and called to her. Soon, every alarm in the room was competing with their cries.

"Kagome!"

"Mother!"

But it was too late. Higurashi Kagome passed away at five o'clock exactly, after forty-six years of life, struck down by the poison of a snake youkai. The room filled with doctors and nurses, trying to bring her back, shoving her family out the door, despite the growls and cries of the two hanyo males who feared this day more than any other. Ai held Kane while he cried and screamed for his mother and InuYasha swore more colorfully than anything she had heard in her life.

Kane let Ai go when she gasped and he realized he had driven his claws into her back. He apologized and dodged her attempt to pull him against her again. He was afraid of hurting her. That's when he finally head what his father was saying.

"Why, Father? Why did you leave Tenseiga to Sesshomaru? He hasn't used it to bring back a life in five hundred years. It's wasted in his possession." InuYasha's words were not lost on his hanyo son, who knew the tale of the swords of Inu no Taisho by heart.

He turned and ran from the hospital. Kane used his neglected youki to speed along the land at a rate a human could never dream to replicate. His feet never even touched the earth and it was like flying, only he couldn't rise very far from the ground. He knew exactly where his uncle secluded himself and it didn't take him even a day to reach the mountain and press deep within until he scented the elder youkai's territorial markers.

"Sesshomaru-sama!" he screamed, sending out a wave of youki to attract his uncle. "Sesshomaru!"

"You do not need to bellow. I am not an old man that cannot hear," Sesshomaru's voice came from behind and Kane spun to face him.

"I need Tenseiga!" Kane gasped out, winded from pushing himself harder than he ever had before.

"Is that why you've come?" Sesshomaru asked, walking past the panting hanyo.

"Please, uncle, my mother has died! She was poisoned—"

"I know," Sesshomaru said, looking off into the distance.

"Then please, you know that I truly need Tenseiga's power," Kane pleaded. Sesshomaru turned to face him, slowly.

"I will not give it to you."

"What?" Kane took a step back. This was not the answer he had expected.

"Tenseiga is not for a hanyo," Sesshomaru said, turning away.

"Fine, whatever, then come yourself! Just please, save my mother."

"I cannot save your mother," Sesshomaru said.

"What are you talking about? I know that Tenseiga failed for you, I heard the stories, but that doesn't mean it will never work!"

"You know nothing," Sesshomaru growled, flicking his wrist at Kane. Kane leaped out of the way of his uncle's claws, shocked that they had been turned against him. Kane had to keep retreating when several more blows followed. He finally ended up with his back against a rock, shaking in fear. While he had seen many battles, they were always from the sidelines with Shippo-chan and he had participated in very few. "Pathetic," Sesshomaru hissed, stepping close to Kane, trapping him. "You will not even fight for that worthless human."

"Don't you _ever _speak of my mother that way," Kane growled. Sesshomaru backhanded him and he tasted blood before he struck the earth.

"I cannot believe that you are of my blood," Sesshomaru spoke, coldly, as he walked away. Kane snapped. He had heard the stories of Sesshomaru's heartlessness, had been told that he had tried to kill his own brother, but the reality of it had never reached him until this moment. He swung his claws at Sesshomaru's back and was surprised when the youkai was no longer there.

"You bastard!" Kane yelled, swinging again a few inches in front of where he saw Sesshomaru moving. He clipped his arm and Sesshomaru turned to him in surprise. Slowly, a smile spread across his face. Kane frowned, suddenly concerned. In his entire memory, he could not recall once seeing Sesshomaru smile before this. It wasn't enough to distract him from blocking the blow that followed, however.

Kane may never have been in a real, life-or-death fight before, but he had taken several kinds of martial arts growing up, at his father's insistence, and a calm had settled over his body once the initial shock of being attacked had passed. Not it was an academic matter in his mind and he was barely thinking as he blocked and lunged, except to use the claws that matched his uncle's, which he had never before unsheathed in a battle.

His hanyo nature blocked much of the pain he would have felt were he human, but his human heart was in agony over this betrayal. It distracted him and Sesshomaru managed to hook his claws into his shoulder and release his poison. Kane screamed, expecting to feel sick, but beyond a mild burning sensation, he felt nothing. They both looked down at the wound in surprise.

"I guess your poison doesn't work on me, uncle," Kane snarled before swinging his leg around to kick at the taiyoukai's head. Sesshomaru blocked it, again grabbing the offending appendage and releasing his poison, but it only served to melt Kane's pants. Kane jerked his leg back and then heard the clank of pebbles falling on the stone beneath his feet. He looked down and found his anklet had been severed. He only had a moment to register the shock before a blow to his head emptied his mind entirely.

Sesshomaru realized his mistake a moment too late as he watched his son transform into his youkai body. It wasn't something he had ever seen before and he was shocked to see black hair grow to replace the silver in his hanyo form. When Kane's darkened eyes looked up to meet his own, he froze. Except for the red color there, he was looking at a male form of Rin, enraged.

It stabbed at his heart more effectively than any blade and he fell to his knees and reached for the beads. He grabbed them all up at once and shoved them at his son, knowing that it was the beads and not the string that held the power. He thrust them into Kane's roaring mouth and it was the last thing he did before his head separated from his body.

Kane came back to himself confused and with a mouthful of prayer beads. He started to spit them out and then realized what they were. He carefully spit them into his hand and clutched them tightly, staring at the blood all over that hand. His eyes moved in horror to Sesshomaru's body. He stumbled backwards, looking for his uncle's head and had to turn and throw up when he found it.

He was a lot smarter than his father and knew that it had to have been Sesshomaru that put the beads back on him and while he wasn't certain of the motivation, he knew that it was the last thing the taiyoukai did. He fell to his knees, shaking and reached for the snowy hair, so like his own, and grabbed it, tossing the head back on the body, hoping it would magically reattach itself.

When it didn't, he took a deep breath and arranged the head into its proper position, making sure that torn flesh met properly. Then he pulled Tenseiga from its sheath, wondering exactly how it worked. He looked down at Sesshomaru and concentrated on wanting to bring him back to life, but nothing happened. He tried swinging the blade, cutting through the body, but again—nothing.

Saying a silent prayer for forgiveness, he slid the sword back to the sheath and then pulled it all from the youkai's body. He tried not to think about it as he ran back down the mountain, pushing himself as hard as before to reach his mother's body quickly. Certainly his father would know how to use the sword! He forced himself to slow down as he reached the hospital doors, running at human speed through the halls and collapsed at his father's feet, curling up in a ball against the stitch in his side. He made a mental note to do more running so that this wouldn't happen again.

He held out Tenseiga to the confused hanyo before him, but InuYasha didn't take the sword. He knelt by Kane and grabbed his arm, rolling him to expose his other hand. He recoiled from the blood, staring at the boy in horror.

"He… said… no," Kane panted in explanation. "Please… use… it," he gasped out. Slowly, InuYasha took Tenseiga and drew it, stepping into the room beyond.

"What's going on?" Ai asked, pulling Kane to a sitting position. "You were gone for hours, where have you been?"

"Getting the sword of life," Kane explained, breathing heavily. "I won't just let her be dead." Ai looked down at him, puzzled, but she didn't ask for any more clarity. She knew it wasn't the right time. A few minutes later, however, InuYasha stepped from the room, clutching the sword, a distant look still in his eyes. "It was for nothing, then," Kane asked, a sob catching in his throat at the memory of Sesshomaru's headless body.

"What did you do to get this sword?" InuYasha whispered.

"I killed him," Kane whispered back. Ai gasped. "I killed Uncle Sesshomaru."

"No," InuYasha whispered, looking away. Suddenly, Kane remembered what Sesshomaru had said to him on the mountain: 'Tenseiga is not for a hanyo.'

"He said it's not for a hanyo!" Kane exclaimed. "Call Shippo-san! Maybe he can use it!" InuYasha looked down at the sword and nodded. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and thumbed through his phone book inside, then pressed the button to call Shippo.

"Get your ass down to the hospital," he growled, then hung up, knowing that Shippo would know who called him so rudely and which hospital to go to. It wasn't even an hour later when Shippo showed up, racing down the hall like a madman, his long red hair flying behind him in a ponytail.

"InuYasha!" he yelled. "It's not Kagome, is it?" InuYasha held out the sword and Shippo slid to a halt in front of him, staring at it. "That's Tenseiga," he said softy. "I smell Sesshomaru's blood—what's going on?"

"Please, he said that it's not for a hanyo," Kane hissed desperately. "Please try to bring her back with it!"

"So Kagome died?" Shippo asked, although the answer was obvious. Tentatively, when he saw no one was going to offer him another answer, Shippo took the blade. This time, Kane stood up and followed the kitsune into the room. He watched Shippo unsheathe and swing the blade clumsily. He never had known how to use a sword. After a few minutes, InuYasha stepped over and snatched the sword away from Shippo, whose head dropped to his chest in defeat. InuYasha stalked over to Kane, grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to stand in front of his mother's body.

"You try," InuYasha said.

"It doesn't work for me," Kane said, shaking his head. "I already tried to bring uncle Sesshomaru back."

"Try," InuYasha insisted, shoving the sword into his son's hand. Kane stared down at it, then put the rosary beads back in his mouth, hoping that two hands would work better than one, clutched the hilt tightly and looked down at his mother's body. Right away, he saw some strange little imp creature appear and he slashed at them. They flew apart and he heard his mother's heart start up again.

Everyone in the room was tense as Kagome slowly opened her eyes.

"Mother?" Kane asked, dropping the sword and letting the beads spill from his mouth with the word. As soon as they hit the floor, he became terrified and knelt down to collect them all. He could barely see them through the tears streaming down his face and he didn't even notice the small hands helping him collect them until they pressed the beads into his hand. He looked up at Ai, not even having realized she was in the room, but couldn't smile for her. She seemed to understand, as she leaned in and kissed his tears away.

"You did it," Ai said, pulling him close. "You saved her." Kane looked up to see his mother and father embracing, InuYasha kissing her in an almost unheard of public display of affection. He had crawled into the bed next to her and was holding her tight against his chest. "Let's give them a moment," Ai said, pulling Kane from the room. Since he didn't know what to say, he followed her numbly. After a few moments, he heard her words. He had saved his mother. Suddenly, it felt like a burden he had never known he carried had disappeared.

InuYasha took him back to the mountain the next day, after Kagome repaired his anklet. They found Sesshomaru's body and InuYasha gathered it up in a mat to carry back down. Kane took the poles behind the body and chanted an apology the entire way down the mountain. He followed his father's lead, expecting him to go back towards the city, but instead, they turned into the valley at the base of the mountain. He was surprised when they came to the base of a stone monument that had an ornate koi carved at the top. Underneath, etched deep, was just one word—a name: Rin. A cherry blossom tree grew behind it, its branches stretching out over the gravestone in full bloom. Kane wondered about that, since it was the wrong season for it to be so. The tree seemed to be frozen in a permanent state of full-flower, its pink blossoms open and dripping petals lightly into the wind.

"Who is Rin?" Kane asked as he set the body down. InuYasha pulled out the shovels that had rode on Sesshomaru's armor the entire ride down the mountain and began digging. Kane took the second one and dug with him until they had a hole the proper depth for burial.

"She was your mother," InuYasha said, startling Kane.

"What?"

"Rin. She was your real mother."

"Real… what are you talking about?" Kane wiped the sweat from his brow and set the shovel down, pinning InuYasha with his gaze.

"Sit down." Kane glared at the other hanyo for a moment, not liking where this conversation was going, but ultimately did as he was told. "You told me that Sesshomaru said he couldn't save your mother." Kane nodded. "He was telling the truth."

"What, you mean… Mom's not your first wife?"

"No, Kagome is the only wife I've had. I'm not your father." InuYasha watched Kane digest the information.

"I don't…"

"I don't understand the details, Sesshomaru never told them to me. But the reason I think Tenseiga rejected him was that he rejected the sword first. It was originally forged to heal, but he had it remade… that doesn't matter. After Tenseiga failed to bring your mother back, Sesshomaru swore never to use it to bring another life back from the dead."

"Why?"

"Because he loved her," InuYasha said. "He loved her so much that he had this monument built and has remained near it for five hundred years. Even when he was married to another youkai, before she left him with their children, he never left this mountain. He never handled change very well, certainly not within himself."

"So… I killed my father," Kane whispered, looking at the body of the man he had called 'uncle' his entire life. "But why didn't he raise me?"

"At first… it was because he didn't want a hanyo offspring. In fact, I'm certain that's why he sent your mother away. He didn't want to create… another me. But later, he told me that he could never have raised you as well as Kagome and I were doing, on his own. He said that he regretted your weakness, but… he understood its necessity. It was something he could never live with. When the age of samurai and conquest ended, he died inside. He was never able to leave it behind. He always held onto his beliefs, even when they were destroying him," InuYasha explained. Kane stared at the hole they had created and thought about what he was being told. It was so much to take in…

"Why did you never tell me?" Kane asked.

"Selfishness, I guess," InuYasha said. "We didn't want you to leave and go live with him. Also, he was happier having a hanyo 'nephew' than he ever could be with a son."

"He didn't want me." Kane looked at Sesshomaru and felt a pang of anger inside. InuYasha sighed.

"That's another reason we didn't tell you. I can't answer that question. I don't know if he wanted you. But… Those beads around your ankle are made from his fang. He donated it—a piece of himself—without question, when he was told it was for you. I think that he loved you," InuYasha said. "As much as he could. Which is more than he ever cared about me." Kane turned to InuYasha and met his eyes.

"You wanted me."

"It's not that simple," InuYasha said, trying to defend his brother after years of hearing it from Kagome. He wasn't sure he believed everything he was saying, but he knew that it wasn't right to have the boy hate his real father.

"It doesn't matter how simple it is," Kane said. "You're my father. You took me when he didn't want me. You raised me. You loved me. That's all that matters to me."

"You may not feel like that when you grow up," InuYasha said carefully. "But I can't argue with any of that. I wanted you the second I saw you, even as I was taking you to _him_." InuYasha stood back up and grabbed his brother's body, wrapped up for burial, and dropped it in the hole. He picked his shovel back up and started burying him. "You shouldn't hate him, though," InuYasha told Kane as he lifted his shovel and joined him.

"I don't," Kane said. "I think… I think I understand. I wouldn't have wanted to live the life he has. And there's nothing that would make me want to give up Mom. I didn't know Rin and I'm sorry she had to die, but…"

"Rin was a lot like Kagome," InuYasha interrupted. "Their personalities were very similar. Both of them were able to look at what everyone else called a monster and love him instead."

"Then she sounds like a wonderful person and it's my loss not to have known her," Kane said quietly, pitching some dirt onto Sesshomaru. Tears formed in his eyes and fell on the dirt as he moved it. "I didn't mean to kill him," he whispered.

"I know," InuYasha said. "I know exactly what you're saying." He set the shovel down and walked over to Kane, putting a hand on his shoulder. "But… I think you did him a favor," he consoled. "Sesshomaru died over a hundred years ago. He's been miserable up here, waiting for another era of war. Peace never settled well with him. You let him die the way he wanted to." Kane turned to InuYasha and hugged him, crying on his shoulder. InuYasha hugged the boy back, as awkward as it felt, because he knew his son needed it. "He died like he lived—a warrior. Not a favor… a gift," InuYasha corrected himself.

After a few minutes, Kane pulled back and wiped his face with the back of his hand. "I want to finish this alone," he told his father, who nodded. InuYasha lifted his shovel and walked away, giving Kane the privacy he needed. Kane finished filling in the grave quietly, then reached out to the stone and carved 'Sesshomaru' under Rin's name with his claw until the depth was comparable. "Thank you, Father. Thank you for my life. I'm sorry I took yours, unless Dad's right and you wanted to die like that. In which case… I hope you're in a better place now. I hope you can find peace." Kane hefted the shovel onto his shoulder and turned and walked away, offering one last, "Good-bye."

_**The End**_


End file.
